Rewriting Annoying Music, PART 1

May 24, 2016

Welcome to the first installment in this (at least) week-long series. For details on why I'm doing this, please see the previous entry titled "Rewriting Music That Annoys Me". Today I'm discussing one of the major faults in organ music that I have to play sometimes, and how to fix what's wrong.

PROBLEM 1: OVERWRITING

What I mean by "overwriting" is this: It's overdone. The music is too busy, or there are too many octave doublings written in the harmony, or both. Usually notes have been written that just don't need to be there, either in a chord or in a moving inner part.

The organ is a powerful instrument. It doesn't need overwriting. With proper registration, playing 3 or 4 notes together is enough. Big chords with lots of doublings really aren't necessary on the organ, and in fact more notes sounding together usually will not sound as good as fewer notes sounding together on the organ. This is a fact that many people writing music for organ just don't seem to understand. Adding voices is reasonable in strategic places, like a final cadence. Even then restraint gives a clearer result. Many settings in the service book were written by folks who seem to have missed this memo.

S 236 Benedictus es, Domine by John Rutter.

Take for example the opening phrase of S 236 Benedictus es, Domine by John Rutter.

I did not record myself playing this passage for you, because it annoys me too much. You can however hear the entire thing being played in a service which I have cued up for you to the correct spot in this YouTube video.

There are a lot of things wrong with this passage, but let's start with the octave doublings. Here they are, marked in different colors so I can talk about them more easily.

Not all of these are bad. Those I have marked in green aren't so bad; they are just passing doublings with the melody, which happens in good writing. The others are poor choices, either wrong from a voiceleading standpoint, or not necessary.

Here I have marked the octave doublings in this passage that are problematic.

  1. m2-4: a tenor voice doubles the pedal (red)
  2. m4-5: doubled 5th between the alto and tenor (blue)

In each case, one of the doubled notes can be removed, and the music will either sound essentially the same, or better.

By the way, did you notice the parallel octaves in the outer voices? (I left it out of the images above to see if you'd notice).

Pretty bad …

There are also problems here from other categories I'm going to cover this week, for example:

It begins with five parts, then all of a sudden there are six, and then five again. There is no reason to do that.

I've circled split parts that are written on single stems with one of the notes tied. Please don't do that. It just looks terrible. When voices move in different rhythms, they should be written as independent parts, using separate stems.

Look what is written there in the tenor where I've indicated crossing voices in m3-4. The lower tenor has been doubling the pedal for the last 2 bars. Then it's the upper tenor doubling the pedal. It's illogical voiceleading.

Now for the two double-arrows with question marks. The alto has been tied for three bars, and it's really necessary to rearticulate it in bar 4? The tenor D must be rearticulated in bar 5, just as it is doubled in the second alto (which is voice crossing) and the other tenor voice disappears? Come on.

My arrangement of Rutter's Benedictus es, Domine.

One of my goals in the way I rewrite music that annoys me is actually to make my changes transparent to anyone who's just singing along. Only organists and musicians listening should hear a real difference. With that in mind, here is my version of this opening passage, which fixes the noted problems.

You'll probably notice a few things:

Why have a split tenor in the first bar and nowhere else? First, because that's what was written, but more importantly, because omitting the fifth sounds too weak at the opening. The melody emerges from the sustained C which ties over to the alto in the second bar, which is not that objectionable. I could have just as well left out the C in the alto in the first bar, and put the alto on the G. I decided that wasn't significantly easier to read or play.

Why didn't I fix the parallel octave? A rule of thumb I use when making these arrangements is this: When fixing a problem makes the music harder to play, it probably isn't the right solution. In this case, I decided the parallel octave was not worth fixing because it would have required the pedal line to either move in quarter notes F-G-A in m4, or a half note F followed by a quarter note A, both of which in my opinion don't sound all that much better, and increase the difficulty of the passage beyond being worthwhile. Instead, I mitigate it by drawing attention to the inner parts with a clear preparation of the suspension in the alto, along with the anticipation of the D in the tenor, also tied over to the downbeat which emphasizes the alto. The alto then resolves by moving in quarter notes with a cliché figure, so that attention is drawn away from the parallel octave as much as possible.

The slight changes to the harmony are a result of improving everything else. The doublings are gone; four parts are all that is needed. The end result is that the music sounds essentially the same, except that it actually sounds a lot better, and it looks a lot better too. It's much easier to play.

How Not To Overwrite

In closing for today, let me leave you with a guideline for writing organ music. Here it is:

Believe it or not, Olivier Messiaen understood this, even though he wrote a lot of big chords for the organ. His harmonies use a lot of notes but not a lot of doublings. The notes he wrote need to be there to produce the harmony he was after, and not more than that.

Pianists often don't get this, because in piano music the tendency is to add doublings of octaves all over the place. That makes sense on a piano, because you can't get octaves any other way than playing them directly. It's close to nonsensical on the organ to work that way; that is what registration is for. To double an octave on the organ, the organist doesn't play another note on the keyboard, but instead pulls out the stop at the desired octave. A new set of pipes then sound along with those already sounding, so the octave doubling happens transparently. The written score doesn't include the octave doubling. That is a completely different way of thinking than pianists are used to. It's also a much simpler and more efficient way of making music.

Thanks for tuning in! This series continues this week with more examples from music that annoys me.

See you soon!
Aaron

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